Iowa’s GOP electors pledge to follow voters’ decision

CEDAR RAPIDS - He didn't get their first vote, but president-elect Donald Trump is going to get the final votes of a handful of Iowans who have one more vote to cast.

Nothing they've seen or heard since the Feb. 1 first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses and nothing they are likely to hear between now and Dec. 19 when Electoral College electors meet is going to dissuade Iowa's six GOP electors from voting for their party's presidential nominee.

'I certainly do not want the alternative,” says James Whitmer of Waterloo, who describes himself as a rock-ribbed conservative backing GOP nominee Donald Trump.

The passion runs as deeply among Democratic electors who can only watch and consider what might have been.

'Absolutely and without reservation,” Joan Peck of rural Benton County said about her hope to cast an Electoral College vote for Hillary Clinton.

Whitmer and Peck are polar opposites on the political spectrum, but they watched Tuesday's election results with heightened anticipation as members of their respective parties' slates of Electoral College electors. The electors, selected by the parties, are tasked with casting the state's six Electoral College votes.

For them, the election didn't end Nov. 8, but merely entered another phase. It might not seem possible, but Remsen pork producer Don Kass predicts it could get crazier.

Kass, a member of the Plymouth County Board, was also a Republican elector in 2004 'and you wouldn't believe the bizarre mail I would get from people asking me to change my vote to John Kerry” rather than President George W. Bush.

Kass wouldn't say who he supported in the caucuses this time around, but none of the other GOP electors said they backed Trump. Whitmer and Alan Braun, a Norwalk physician, backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Polly Granzow, a former state representative from Eldora, and Dylan Keller, a University of Northern Iowa student from Donnellson, backed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Retired O'Brien County Recorder Kurt Brown of Primghar was a Ben Carson supporter.

Unlike 23 other states, electors in Iowa aren't bound to vote for their party's candidates. Still, there's little likelihood any one of Iowa's electors is going to cross party lines.

'I don't want people to find my name if they Google ‘every elector who ever went against their pledge,' ” Braun said.

'Like everyone else, I'm not happy with everything,” Granzow said, 'but I agree with the policies he's presenting.”

Keller, who describes himself as a 'Japanese, Mennonite, Republican from southeastern Iowa,” plans to be faithful to his pledge to vote for the GOP nominee, but 'my electoral vote is in no way for Trump, the man, but for the Republican Party's nominee that so happens to be Donald Trump.”

As for the Democratic electors, they won't be casting a ballot on Dec. 19, but they said they were ready to vote for Hillary Clinton had they been given the chance.

'I've supported Clinton since 2007 and I gave my promise to vote for her and I plan to stand by it,” Carrie Tedore of Dubuque, who calls politics her hobby, said before Tuesday's election.

'There's no way I could ever cast a vote for him,” AFSCME Local 61 President Danny Homan said about Trump.

Tedore, Homan, Peck and elector Randal Black of Mason City backed Clinton in the caucuses. The other two Democratic electors - Jack Schuler and Nick Kruse - backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

'A few Sanders delegates approached me and said, ‘You know, you can vote for whoever you want,' ” said Schuler, a Des Moines high school English teacher. He said he wouldn't have done that because 'it goes back to representing the person chosen by the people.”

Although he believes there are many Democrats who would have been a better nominee than Clinton, Kruse, an accounting major at the University of Iowa, said he hoped Clinton would win the election and had she done so he was ready to 'respect and represent their vote.”

Being an elector isn't a high-profile job - until Dec. 19 when they cast their ballots. Most electors say only friends and people who follow the process closely know their role.

Some people have talked to Tedore about the responsibility of being an elector, she said, 'but mostly because I bring it up because I'm so proud to do it.”

Likewise, Peck considers it an honor and privilege to have been selected to represent the party.

Not getting the opportunity to cast an electoral vote is disappointing.

'After casting one of the ‘first-in-the-nation' votes for president in the Iowa caucuses,” Peck says she hoped 'to be able to cast one of the ‘last-in-the-nation' votes as an elector.”